I think it’s safe to say both Jill and I are huge fans of teatime and the treats it brings so I was so excited to learn her new book is ALL ABOUT teatime. And treats! In Teatime in Paris! Jill walks us through French patisserie classics such as éclairs, macarons, millefeuille, tartlets and Saint-Honoré. Far from making making French treats seem intimidating, Jill guides us effortlessly through even the most tricky sounding treats – with step by step instructions and a good dose of Scottish humour that anyone who has met Jill in real life will recognize. As she walks us through recipes for the easiest of treats right through to to the crème de la crème, Jill points out some of the streets famous for the best patisseries in Paris, adding bits of of history and plenty of baking tips, making this a recipe tour that’s both fun and accessible. This sweet tour around the City of Light incorporating interesting historical facts as well as recommendations for where to find the best pastries in Paris. The only type of guide book you’ll need!

The book is organised in chapters which group similar treats together – choux pastry, millefeuille, macarons and tartlets all get their own chapter with many iterations and flavour variations. Far from being as intimidating as their names imply, these treats are made accessible for the home baker through Jill’s straightforward explanations and step-by-step photos for many of the recipes. The Crème de la Crème chapter groups some classic pastries and puts a neat modern and very “Jill” spin on them – the Paris-Brest-Edinburgh-Choux-Nut being just one example (it has a chocolate whiskey ganache!)

The book also includes a helpful chapter on baking equipment (the essential and the “little luxuries”) along with a list of stockists for ingredients and equipment in various countries. There’s also a useful “quick reference guide for egg whites” – because as Jill reminds us, “you can’t always predict the amount of egg whites you have saved up in making egg yolk recipes or saved for macarons” – she provides a conversion table for the rest of the ingredients in a few of her recipe (macarons, financiers, tuiles and coconut macaroons) depending on how many egg whites you find yourself with.

But more than a cookbook filled with recipes for delicious teatime treats, Jill also takes us on a treasure hunt all over Paris – providing clues to some of the city’s best pâtisseries. Jill’s Favourite Sweet Walks in Paris provides the traveller with a sweet tooth with endless hours of walks which take in some of the most well-known pastries and desserts in Paris. No stores are named by name but Jill guides us via street names and monuments to exactly where we need to go to satisfy our sweet tooth in the City of Light. With 11 areas of the city covered in this chapter you could seriously travel to Paris with no other guidebook and be entertained (and well-fed!) for many days!

Two of my favourite tea-time treats are macarons and cannelés and I’ve made Jill’s recipes from the book for both. Jill’s method even inspired my own recipe for cannelés which you can read about here. When it comes to macarons, I simply can not go past salted caramel and so I was delighted to find an interesting twist (with mascarpone) on a salted caramel ganache in Teatime in Paris! Jill and her publisher are generously allowing me to share the recipe for the ganache here today. Warning – it is so good it might not make it into those macaron shells 😉

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Disclosure: I was provided with a copy of Teatime in Paris! for review purposes. I was not required to write about the book or host a giveaway, nor am I being compensated for doing do. All opinions 100% my own. And FULL disclosure – Jill is a good friend. I only share books and products I really love on this site.

13 Responses to Teatime in Paris! (and a recipe for salted-caramel ganache)

Wow, Mardi. What a review! And I love how you’ve been so thorough, going through it from start to finish. Thank you, my friend.

I also love how you’ve made your macarons flashy yellow for salted caramel – I forgot to mention that it’s fun choosing different colours than the fillings – and they are “spot on” your polka dotty plate!

Did we really eat all of these pastries together? Yes we did – looking forward to another sweet afternoon very soon in Paris!
Cheers, Mardi x

I’d love to try that St. Honore (plus I could use the saint’s blessing on my own baked goods)! Thank you for posting the recipe for salted caramel ganache–I will be making it at the first opportunity. I look forward to reading “Teatime in Paris” as the author’s excellent book “Mad about Macaron” is already in my macaron collection.